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Aware that this moment was not reserved for me, I walked out the door and shut the door firmly behind me. Their raised voices seemed to shake the panels as I heard my father try to defend himself against the accusations that tumbled, fierce and uncensored, out of my mother’s mouth. Clearly, my mother had known about Marie Leveraux all along. But her rage brought me no satisfaction. This was, I knew, between them now. My main concern at this point was finding Jeyne. Without a word to anyone, I mounted Beauty, determined to reach New Orleans by nightfall.
Mr. Rozier, the man who seemed to know all, was going to help me once again. But this time, obtaining the information I needed was going to be a far greater challenge. I was all too aware of what happens to slaves once they are taken to the city. Many of them, especially the women, were sold immediately, often into unimaginable situations. Even if I did find Jeyne, things would never be the same again. The innocence we knew was gone forever.
My heart was heavy as I rode down the long drive. Once, looking back, I saw Lizzie standing in my mother’s bedroom window and my chest became even heavier. I was no longer the little boy she had help to raise, but the man who had destroyed her life. Jeyne, her only child, had been taken away from her and all because she loved me. Because of this, I felt, I had lost Lizzie, too.
Chapter Twenty-One
The ride to New Orleans was passed deep in thought, surprisingly enough about God. Was He really just? And if He was, how could he allow people who loved one another to be separated by an unjust system? In Sunday school, I had been taught that man’s original sin was disobedience, but what I came to realize on that long ride was that Adam’s real sin was not disobedience, but disloyalty. Instead of defending Eve, Adam had thrown her to the side, straight into the path of God’s anger, unwilling to take responsibility for the role he played in eating the so-called apple.
Adam had also blamed God for giving him Eve, and to me, in my disturbed mind, doingthatwas the ultimate sin. A man and woman who were truly in love were inseparable and unmistakably connected. For if Eve was made from Adam, wasn’t Adam forever connected to her? And what if Adam had defended Eve to the death, would there have been a different outcome? Would God have still banned them from the Garden of Eden? Looking at the story this way revealed to me that there couldn’t possibly be a god. A god that created a man and woman to be separated from each other, even symbolically, could not exist. It was a contradiction. For what “just” God would create beauty only to destroy it?
It was nightfall before I reached Rozier’s house, and I was exhausted. “Come in and sit down, my boy,” he said sympathetically as he led me to his sitting room. “You’ve had some ordeal.”
During the ride to the New Orleans, I had been unable to form any real plan or concrete strategy. All I was really able to do was push Beauty as fast as she could go in my quest to find Jeyne. And then, for more than three hours, I walked up and down Baronne and Gravier Streets calling out Jeyne’s name like a mad man, hoping to hear her cry out from one of many high-walled slave pens where about a hundred men, women and children were crowded in structures that were no bigger than one of the shacks we kept for goats. The stench of human waste was overpowering. Shouts and moans came from inside the pens, and I could hear children sobbing and crying for their mothers. And then there were the dead, who were carried out surreptitiously by men in dark clothing. Never in my life had I felt so helpless.
“Please, Mr. Rozier…just tell me where she is,” I said, slumping into one of the wing chairs by the fireplace.
“I would if I could, Thomas,” Rozier said, “but it’s out of my hands now. Just stay here and rest for the night. I’ll have one of my nigras prepare a meal for you.”
“There’s nothing a meal can do for me. I need information.”
“I’d prefer not to get myself involved in yetanotherfamily dispute,” he replied firmly.
“You’re my father’s friend as well as his lawyer,” I said. “You’re always going to be involved.”
“Very well,” he sighed. “The sale was made earlier today...to some trader on his way to Alabama. That’s all I know. Your father didn’t care how it was done. He just wanted it to be quick.”
“Surely you have a name, an address—”
“It’s too late, Thomas,” he said to me. “She’s gone, and belongs to someone else. She’s their property now.”
The realization tore at my heart. “Who is he?”
He looked down at his clasped hands. “Just because the trader is on his way to Alabama doesn’t mean that’s where she’s headed.”
“Please. I have to find her.”
“And if you do, then what? If you take her, she’d be stolen property.”
His words hit home but I refused to give in. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Look,” he said, his broad face grim, “I understand how you feel. But giving you the trader’s name isn’t going to change the fact that Jeyne is still a slave...a piece of property that can be passed from one man to another. There’s nothing you can do about that. It’s the law. The best thing you can do is to learn your lesson from all of this and get ready for the next phase of your life. The world is wide open for young men like you. It’s time to get ready for it. You’re in your final year at the academy.”
“And then I go onto college so I can be aneducatedman who owns slaves.”
“You alreadyarea slave owner,” he said with a hint of bewilderment in his voice. “You are the sole heir to Bellevue.”
“I didn’t ask to be.”
“I didn’t ask to be a French bastard either but here I am,” he revealed. “A real man embraces who he is. He doesn’t run from it. You might not believe it now, but in a few months or so you’ll get over this. And by next year, you’ll be making wedding plans with that cousin of yours.”
“That’s where you wrong, sir,” I said trying to hold my voice steady and not think about Elizabeth. “I won’t ever get over this. What I’m going to do is find Jeyne, even if it takes my last breath.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
In the flurry of everything that took place following the fateful night in the barn, I had had little time to reflect and absorb all my emotions. The events of that catastrophic moment came crashing down around my head like a tall stack of china plates that have been piled too high. And as I lay in bed surrounded by the quiet of Mr. Rozier’s house with nothing to disturb me but my own chaotic thoughts, all I could do was think about Jeyne, my best friend and the woman I loved. The thought of living life without her was daunting.
By selling her, my father had not only betrayed me, he had broken my heart. How could he have not known what this would do to me? To Lizzie, to my mother, to all of us? Gradually, I came to the stark realization that my father didn’t love me. He was only interested in control and showing me that he had power over my life. And what better way to prove that power but to take away the one thing I loved the most.
